"When Majesco shut down Taldren Inc. in 2003, illegally attempted to recruit talent away from the studio and stole source code using planted 'assistant' developers, I asked everyone I knew to never touch anything with a Majesco logo on it again.

"This is a story about big against small, about corporate espionage and a man-child producer with a thing for Stevie Case. This is a story I have been waiting years to tell."

As one of the people who watched Black9's progress in the gaming press and then wonder why it suddenly stopped appearing, it is both sad and relieving to hear the real story. As someone whose life as a gamer was irrevocably enriched by Deus Ex, I have little doubt that Black9 would have been of similar caliber. Is there truly no chance of the IP being resurrected?

"...there are two ways to meet life; you may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armour, and you are safe - but bored. Or you can care greatly, and live greatly - till life breaks you on its wheel." - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Failing that consult the desiderata.

As for Majesco, I had high hopes for advent rising, which proved to be largely unfounded, and my Psychonauts box says it was made by a man named Tim. I like Tim :)

Click the "Send this to the Printer" link, it lets you read the whole thing.

sammyfreak:But there is a Magesco logo on my Psychonauts box, so in my eyes they are forgiven.

Psychonauts was funded by Microsoft, who then canceled its publishing contract with Double Fine. Not quite as bad as what Majesco did here but Majesco just published a finished game. It didn't fund the development really.

I comprehend the industry and studios have issues and priorities to deal with, however when these compromise and damage the potential of a game (Bioshock was heavily damaged by casual console zombie focus IMO its a 6 no more no less, and the PC version needs to be fixed still...).

My point is I will not let the industry loosen up on features,options and forward thinking game mechanics, no matter the reason I will rail against cheap,boring,poor options and halfassed games.

I was working at another company that was dealing with Majesco at the same time, and can attest to the style of that Majesco producer. Thankfully he was replaced part way through our project by a much more reasonable individual.

ugen999:As one of the people who watched Black9's progress in the gaming press and then wonder why it suddenly stopped appearing, it is both sad and relieving to hear the real story. As someone whose life as a gamer was irrevocably enriched by Deus Ex, I have little doubt that Black9 would have been of similar caliber. Is there truly no chance of the IP being resurrected?

If you look around, you can find on the internet the tabletop version of the game that we did as part of the promo/marketing effort. As we were closing in, it was something Erik commissioned from Steve Perrin, and I worked with him on collating all of the world info and building it into a tabletop game. He finished it, and it was actually tested at a few game cons to favorable results. So the IP at least survives in that form.

The ideas from the game made enough of an impression on me that I am building my own cyberpunk IP around them, but it isn't Black9. For the game specifically, even the game story, at this point it would have to be wholly redone to compete with other modern games... and putting the IP, which was part of the contestation point of the lawsuit, onto modern technology is too much of a Pandora's Box. Majesco would probably leave it alone, but if it got too successful, they might be financially obligated to try to get a stake in it. All of this means it's highly unlikely anyone would touch it. And to be honest I don't think any of the original creators is interested in revisiting the past. It was just too painful. I still have a hard time looking at the damn game. I know Erik feels the same way. So it's easier just to move on, try again, build new things with the soul of the old ones rather than trying to resurrect the dead.

I think it's a great lesson. It's very romantic to talk about being broken on life's wheel, but, it's much better to have 'cared greatly and lived greatly' and still be unbroken at the end of it. Just reading this issue, the article with Dave Jaffe talks about how the experience of _Heartland_ had the effect that "I'm not only OK, but thrilled to be working towards a Michael Bay version of a videogame maker" after wanting to make a game about "How would we react if we were occupied?" complete with American resistance fighters decapitating foreign soldiers.

Don't get me wrong--I'm all for more _Twisted Metal_s and _God of War_s and I don't subscribe at all to the idea that a game that is just fun can't be every bit as great as one that 'makes people cry'. However, I can't even believe a game like that was being made. Let alone from the guy who gave us Sweet Tooth.

I think the lesson--and it's the right one in my opinion--is that we don't realize how few are the times we will really, truly love things in our lives, whether they are persons, places, or even things like software projects (there's that great line from a Saw Doctors song: "a girl can foul you up/tear your life apart/but there's more than just one way/to break a young man's heart" in reference to not getting a through pass when you're wide open). That is true no matter how little "indifference" we exercise. Think about it: even a decade-long romance every decade from 16 to 66 is only five people. Only *five* people from getting your driver's license to getting your Social Security check even if you're that open to experiencing romantic love with the people that pass through your life.

I don't think anything in the last section of the article talked about being closed off. I think it talked about living a life where one has 'cared greatly and lived greatly' but done so without blinders on, taking the chance to love but not taking a *blind* chance. That no matter how amazing a game project is, that if there are no contracts, no threat of litigation by the developer towards the publisher if they play dirty, and a jerk of a production manager, to make sure that how ever much you fall in love with the project you can walk away at the end.

The reason to make sure as much as one can that the things that pass through your life that you love are heartwarming when all is said and done (and not heartbreakers) is that no matter how open you are to loving the things that pass through your life, there really aren't going to be that many of them.

A friend of mine and I have discussed games and The Games Industry at some length. Since I can remember we (and many of our friends) have wanted to get into game design, development and/or programming. Our knowledge/ideas of the business of games only stretches so far as what we can see on the surface, and even that shattered our idealistic hopes when we finally started looking realistically at turning games into our job.

Reading this more than confirms the suspicions/fears I've harboured and (mostly sub-consciously) refrained from exploring. It's almost like the developers become machines and the studio a factory. Somewhere along the line money blinds people to the fact that it's other people building a game, creating art.

Games aren't the only form of entertainment art that have this tenuous relationship between producer/publisher and creator. It's depressing to think that at some point the heart and soul you've poured into your story, whether it be film, book, TV series, comic, or game, just becomes another product to some salesman.

You know, I really need to stop scaring people away from the games industry. I tried to compensate for some of this stuff with the first thing I ever sold to the Escapist, "Why We Haven't Lapsed" ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_61/358-Why-We-Havent-Lapsed ). So I'm linking to that again in response to the people who inevitably (and understandably) come in here and say "that's why I don't work in video games". All of it still holds up, and all of it was written after Black9 and after EA.

There is no question that in order to survive in games you have to love it more than money, more than stability. Maybe it's that you have to have something wired funny in you. But those heights, those moments, like the ones we did reach with Black9 during the final phases, make the losses worthwhile.

I am all in favor of indie game development, but I think I will always be a "mainstream" game developer, or whatever it is that you call someone who works for a third party studio. If I can avoid it I'll never work for a company with more than 40 people in it, even if that does mean you're more vulnerable to unscrupulous publishers. There are things you can accomplish with a professional team that you just can't reach on your own, or with a small group. There are heights and amplified versions of the flow state that you can only get with a full mainstream development team. And, of course, in mainstream distribution your games are seen by a heck of a lot more people. I don't mean to knock indies by saying this, all I'm saying is that I think it's important to note that while I will always rail against injustice at the top of my lungs and from the highest prominences available (hello, Escapist!), in spite of all of this, I'm still here, and it's still worth it. It's worth it if it's in you to do this stuff.

ErinHoffman:You know, I really need to stop scaring people away from the games industry. I tried to compensate for some of this stuff with the first thing I ever sold to the Escapist, "Why We Haven't Lapsed" ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_61/358-Why-We-Havent-Lapsed ). So I'm linking to that again in response to the people who inevitably (and understandably) come in here and say "that's why I don't work in video games". All of it still holds up, and all of it was written after Black9 and after EA. ... <long quote shortened> ...

Personally, I never got the impression when reading that you were trying to scare anyone off. I looked at it more as letting people know the kind of things that can go on behind the scenes so if they decide to take a shot they can go into it eyes open and heads up as it were.

It was a really good article I might say. Interesting even since I myself are trying to get into Playground Squad ( www.playgroundsquad.com ). But I don't agree with the "final teaching" so to say, words of wisdom.

Have to walk away - Not my style :3Better late then never I say -nods-

ErinHoffman:You know, I really need to stop scaring people away from the games industry. I tried to compensate for some of this stuff...etc

Wait a second, ma'am. What exactly are you trying to accomplish here? First you scare and traumatize the hell out of us by telling the story of Black9, corporate theft, conspiracy, how evil people are in the games industry...etc, then you tell us that "it's not like that at all. It's actually quite good. Duh". Well, I'm not the one for pulling anyone's hair, but I don't get it.

When I was young (damn, I hate to say that), I myself was thinking about getting into programming games, or more like designing games. I was more into design than coding. I had awesome ideas for games, and I could picture myself designing cool games, working. But as life went on, I realized that life is a b*tch, and for me to become a game designer, first I have to become either an anti-social bedroom programmer, a code-monkey for some delvelopment studio and ride on the vague promise to maybe (just maybe) become a designer after some years...or be disgustingly rich. For the first, I was too friendly and social, for the second I was too lazy and imaginative, and for the third...well that's just not true. At that point, I gave up on the whole thing, and went on to study IT and got a job as a fault analyst for Sun in the middle of nowhere.

And I think I was better off this way. I still like games, I still like playing them, and I still like sketching down ideas for new games, and discussing them with my friends like "How awesome that game would be...if it were ever made reality", but my ideas, unlike yours, will never become real.... And I'd like to add, that maybe it's better this way, because I don't have to put up with all that stuff you wrote there, the dark side of the video game industry...

I enjoyed the computer science course I took this year and I'm taking the grade twelve one next year, so I was wondering recently if being a programmer by career would work for me. Unquestionably, I'm not really that great at coding, but I was thinking about it anyways because there's some huge shortage of programmers apparently, and a bad programmer is still better than no programmer. If I do get into it, I will immediately search out game companies. Even if I need to put up with the bullshit and only get half the pay that I would get doing other stuff, it would still be worth it to be involved in the creation of game. To be part of the process that makes the games I play.

praxis22:"...there are two ways to meet life; you may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armour, and you are safe - but bored. Or you can care greatly, and live greatly - till life breaks you on its wheel." - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Fisher was one of the more favorable types of reformers--an educational one, and a Montessori proponent, to boot--and a less foolish one, at that. But that quote still shows she didn't read up enough on Kierkegaard to understand that dualisms for human life are one of our most naive concoctions.

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:Really makes you wonder about the state of gaming today.

I'm not so sure I'd let one tale we're largely sympathetic to shake my faith in anything, much less an industry. Much less an industry prone to consistent and tumultuous revision and revolution.

The Extremist:I guess it's indie for us...

But then even "indie" works are becoming increasingly commercial. I'm lookin' at you, Sundance.

On the subject of the horrors Erin is presenting to us i must admit that i have been frightened off from the game industry. I have often toyed with the idea of game working with game design and when i make my own games in my head they turn out briliant and creative.

But then i hear about the amount of effort that goes into them, how hard the competition is in the games industry and the hard work you need to go throught to get into a senior design position. And it makes me cringe think of the life-style necesary to achieve that. No i dont want to devote my entire life to making games.

If you love games, you will never find as satisfying a job as making them. I've been on both sides of the fence, and non game jobs are just boring. I've been through the wringer, done my share of insane crunch, and even a similar set of horror stories from the Majesco front, and other publishers for that matter.

Still...I'd rather be doing this than anything else. You don't have to kill yourself to get to a senior design position, and frankly it probably takes longer to get to a similar senior position in corporate America. It just takes paying your dues and having the right skills, like in any profession.

That's quite... insightful... no, who am I kidding, I'm disgusted! That's a obvious breach of IP laws, and to make matters worse, it was a lack of money which made the devs take this matter to court, kick Majestico's collective ass, and then make their game anyways. As it stands, we have one dev bust, one publisher bust, and one good game off the shelves... 'spose nobody won. Ugh, I really hope things have cleared behind the scene now, or is this stuff still happening?

Playbahnosh:Wait a second, ma'am. What exactly are you trying to accomplish here? First you scare and traumatize the hell out of us by telling the story of Black9, corporate theft, conspiracy, how evil people are in the games industry...etc, then you tell us that "it's not like that at all. It's actually quite good. Duh". Well, I'm not the one for pulling anyone's hair, but I don't get it.

I didn't say it was good, I said it was worth it. ;)

It is very parabolic; highs and lows. But it's also changing rapidly, like Incandescence says. I think that there are always things we can learn from past experiences and war stories (of which game developers are quite fond), but it's important to keep in mind that there are very few absolutes in an industry that evolves as rapidly as games.

There is no question that if what you love is playing games, you should get a day job and play games for recreation. The drive to create them is something else entirely. A lot of people don't realize this, which is one of the reasons why the video game studies programs in colleges have such a high burnout rate -- reflecting the burnout rate in the industry as a whole. I don't know what it is today, but it used to be something on the order of 50%+ people who entered the industry would not stay past their first year or even less. It isn't what a lot of people think it is, and enjoying CONSUMING games does not mean you would enjoy or be cut out for making them.

I spend a lot of time talking to students both because I think they are at an extremely interesting point in their lives and are little sponges about games and how they work -- and I also think they're an extremely important part of the future. I won't recap it here, but any of you interested in getting into the industry, in what it takes, go and look up my Inside Job series in the 'Columns' section or by clicking my name in the header of this article. There is better advice there, from a wider array of people, than I can give you here.

I do write these things because I want people to know what they're getting into, and if possible I want them to know how to interact with publishers, what warning signs to watch for, how to have good self preservation. The industry is extremely volatile; a lot of people get into it and when something like this (Taldren's collapse) happens they are caught with their pants down because they've spent all their money on cars and luxury goods rather than saving for rainy days. And if you stick around in this business long enough (or anywhere, these days), the rain will come. But if you can be smart and learn fast and weather it out, the payoffs are worth it. IMHO, anyway. If you love it. If, like Raygor says, you can't imagine doing anything else. I can't imagine doing anything else, either. No other professional field holds as much interest for me, so I know I wouldn't do as well.

As part of an extension on that bit above about the industry evolving, it's both getting better (to answer your question, stompy -- but bad apple producers and publishers are a fact of life, it's somewhat a dice throw whether you encounter one, and if you do third party development long enough, the odds will catch up with you), and it's, I think, easier to get into and easier to stay in than it ever has been before. The whole industry is simply a lot bigger and broader, so you have more options if you break through. And yes, it's difficult to get a design position, but it's easier than it was ten years ago (though not easier than it was fifteen years ago, strangely), and once you DO break through, you will be in demand pretty much forever if you can prove you're a good designer. And these days, very much unlike a few years ago, there are a lot of jobs for people with game experience in outside but related fields -- advertising, non-profits, educational, and tech of all kinds. So while I think these lessons are important and I think the truth is always important, there is still reason for hope. I retain a certain cynicism about the third party development model, but I know enough businesspeople who have made it work to not despise it entirely. And this is the other thing -- part of the industry's evolution is that we have a tremendously greater number of management and business professionals who actually CAME from the game industry (not people who came from Walmart and tried to apply poorly fitting expertise to games), and that's making a huge difference.

Btw, Cheeze_Pavilion, I forgot to say, thanks for the thoughtful comments on the life lesson. I agree completely.

ErinHoffman:There is no question that in order to survive in games you have to love it more than money, more than stability. Maybe it's that you have to have something wired funny in you. But those heights, those moments, like the ones we did reach with Black9 during the final phases, make the losses worthwhile.

No, it seems to me you just have to stop working for American companies ;)

PS: Black9 was one of my most anticipated games on the xbox. I still have some Black9 wallpapers on my PC.

It is very parabolic; highs and lows. But it's also changing rapidly, like Incandescence says. I think that there are always things we can learn from past experiences and war stories (of which game developers are quite fond), but it's important to keep in mind that there are very few absolutes in an industry that evolves as rapidly as games.

While I've never been in the games industry, I was (and still am) in *some* industry, namely the music industry, if you can call it like that. On the university, I joined a crew of partymakers, and started to organize parties around campus. Now this is exactly what you said about the games industry, that

It isn't what a lot of people think it is, and enjoying CONSUMING [something or other] does not mean you would enjoy or be cut out for making them.

This stands for the music and party undustry as well, that's personal experience on my part. It's VERY different attending a party and organizing it. If you stay on the other side of the DJ stand for too long, you start to see the warning signs, and feel like you've been cheated. It's MUCH harder than it seems, to make a party, even if you are JUST the DJ. There are so many things to watch out for, you have to play songs you dreadfully hate and put up with people you would avoid if possible, working until dawn, organizing every little detail...etc. It's not as fun and rosy as it seems on the outside either

BUT!

Watching 500+ people throw themselves around to YOUR music, complimenting you, total strangers shaking your hand and telling how awesome that last party was, watching the smiles on people's faces, the dance, and the passionate screams when people hear their favorite songs...and the thought that YOU did that, it's priceless, standin there in the DJ booth, watching people having a good time WITH you... So I think I know what you meant by this article, but IMHO you should've presented somethin from the plus side as well...

It's actually good to hear from someone who was in some sort of production role from Majesco's end. That said, in addition to some facts here that are flatly incorrect, it should be noted that Taldren hired outside QA specifically because the QA provided by Majesco was terrible. I'm not saying your work was terrible, because the contributions of any one person there do not indicate the whole, and there certainly were some useful bugs that came across -- but they were very few, and on the whole it was the worst QA I've seen, before or since. We did get one of the most amusing publisher bugs I've seen through that process, though:

"Midway through multiplayer, control switches from player 1 to player 2." Allegedly on the XBox.

For the rest of what you're saying in terms of the game's playable quality, for one thing, the game was taken off Majesco QA several months before it was, as you so eloquently put it, "shit-canned". So the period you're talking about is in the section of the article right before "the team finally hit its stride". Were there issues before that? Of course, TONS. And I'm talking epic difficult growing pain type issues, some of which I alluded to in an earlier version of the article that were trimmed for length.

But for the game's final state, which I did become unfortunately familiar with, it was roughly 85% complete. Not only were there more than 3 complete levels, you could go through the full progression of the game up until the final stages, and we'd actually REWRITTEN and re-designed several of the levels. Now, the game's absolute last build had several things wrong with it because there were, again, major pieces being restructured -- and the game did go through a period when the weapons were very ordinary, there was actually a series of design meetings about that specifically and a good 40% of the weapons were redone -- but from what you're saying here it seems clear to me that what you are talking about as the last build and what I'm talking about as the last build were two totally different things. Multiplayer also did suck severely right up until what became the last couple of months of development -- but not only did they get an entire art revamp (the early stage graphics were limited due to some technical issues we were having with Unreal, but by the time those were overcome we had textures that held 300% the detail of the original ones, and it made a DRASTIC difference), the multiplayer game styles also radically changed in that period, mostly because early multiplayer play was effectively placeholder. Yes, vehicles were cut, but, also corroborating my suspicion that you did not do late-stage QA on the game, they were cut very early, and I mean VERY early, in the dev process, less than halfway through -- both because of functionality and because they just weren't necessary for the type of game it was. Given that there are today even issues with Halo's vehicle use I don't think it was a bad decision.

All of this is basically normal (though not good) for a development process at the time. It was behind the curve of what a company that had already produced a game just like this would have done, but that was true for a great many companies at the time (not to mention the issues with PS2 development, which EVERYONE was struggling with at this point in time).

So, that all being said, it's useful to have your perspective, and there are as many sides to this story as there were people involved. I stand by mine, and I think the facts would indicate what you were seeing was early development compared to what the actual final state was. Who knows, it was likely part of the issue if Majesco itself had such a level of doubt about the game, but the actual production people -- even the asshole -- didn't voice that up until the very end when they were talking about cancellation. But management of the publisher's anxiety state is certainly one of the biggest challenges with third party development, when a game really doesn't come together until the last minute. Maybe they would have been more civil human beings if they weren't in this anxiety state. But I kind of doubt it.

Did you sign a Non-Discloure Agreemment? If so, did that NDA allow you a chance to comment after water passes under the water? Or are you told to be silent forever?

Because if you did sign an NDA, and if you broke that NDA, then it is you who I should be upset with, not with the Company.

As for the 'office politics' itself, I'll reserve comment on that. I think a more fruitful article would have tried to get the side of the bosses themselves, let them speak in their defense, instead of only showing one side. Sorry for not taking your side, Erin.

Like many other gamers, I've given some thought to trying to get into the games industry, but ultimately while I love to world-build, tweak rulesets, write, and generally tinker with things, it seems to me from the reading I do and the developers I know that working in the gaming industry is a life rather than a job. Medicine and law seem to be similar fields in this respect. One of my best friends is a developer at EA Montreal. His last project was Army of Two, which came out recently. We talk pretty regularly and during the development process I frequently saw him signed in to his work instant messaging account on evenings and weekends.

Admittedly, I've worked some long hours myself. I'm a chemical process engineer, it happens sometimes. But it's always much more temporary than the game development crunch seems to be, even outside of death march scenarios. I don't love my job, but I do like it, and it's very important to me that it be a job, not a life. My interests are too diverse for me to be consumed by an overriding passion for one particular area -- I'm an engineer, a gamer, a musician, a writer. (Published, even. Thanks, Escapist!)

All of this is by no means a criticism of game developers or the game development process; I definitely want the people creating the games I play to be passionate about them. ^_^

It is one of the little peculiarities of this whole thing that I didn't sign an NDA that I can recall. Came down to being an oversight, I think, but I am indeed careful of that kind of thing as all people who sign them should be. darkfalz, though, I would bet probably did. ;) That being said, I think these things should be discussed, and a lot of what goes down shouldn't stay in the black box.

I could have approached Majesco, and I did actually try to track down that producer. Obviously I know his name -- but he seems to have vanished from game development. Majesco was careful to note in communications a long time ago that he was no longer there. So anyone I talked to, unless I could somehow have found someone like darkfalz, would not have been there at the time. And frankly, there were black and white things I directly witnessed both from that producer and the stealing of source code, recruiting of talent, so many breaches of contract that made the actual pertinent parts of what this article expressed -- because I could have written a book -- incontrovertible. It was an especially bad circumstance that the current model of third party development allows for. It is a rarity, fortunately, mostly because everybody lost on this, and I mean everybody -- but it was also a study in how a company can get away with breaking a whole slew of laws without repercussion, and that, to me, was the story here. If you all would buy a book I suggest you contact your favorite book publishers and demand that they pay me a very high commission fee and I will do all the research you like. :)

Question: How many man points do I lose if I teared up halfway through this article? I was reading it and the pain of losing something you'd nearly killed yourself to almost complete just hit me. My defence in Man Court will be that I was listening to the intro of Stairway to Heaven at the time as well.On a side note, I wondered what had happened to that interesting game I'd only seen a paragraph and a screenshot of.

Saskwach:Question: How many man points do I lose if I teared up halfway through this article? I was reading it and the pain of losing something you'd nearly killed yourself to almost complete just hit me. My defence in Man Court will be that I was listening to the intro of Stairway to Heaven at the time as well.On a side note, I wondered what had happened to that interesting game I'd only seen a paragraph and a screenshot ot.

Don't worry, you just broke even. You gain 300 man points if you make it through the article.